It's fitting that the house looks this way.
One of the agents takes her hand to steady her as she steps over an upended sidetable blocking the doorway and Marie whispers a barely audible thanks, her red-rimmed eyes sweeping over the damage. Her favorite Bombay Company curio cabinet is smashed into three pieces, scattering a collection of knick-knacks and splinters of plantation mahogany across the floor. That lavender satin round pleat throw pillow from Pier 1 has a yellow stain on it which might be urine or vomit; hard to say. Someone carved an obscene word into the antique coffee table they got up in Nob Hill three years ago. It's all out of control, as if a storm blew in and ruined everything she cherished, everything that made this a home.
The DEA hired workers to come in and clean everything up for her after the investigators had finished their work. It's kind of them, Marie supposes. Then again, that sort of thing ought to be standard. She isn't even sure if she's grateful for it. Is it better or worse, being surrounded by strangers versus being alone here? They ask her questions as she passes through the house and she answers in hollow, dreamy murmurs, making her way down the corridor to the bedroom. Their bedroom.
The intruders shredded the mattress and overturned it. It looks like a gutted body to her, the stuffing and springs spilling out between strips of wine-colored Supima bedsheet. She wraps her arms around her own stomach, flinching when she looks at it, then peels her gaze away. Her eyes find the vanity table and she steps closer. Whoever did this ransacked the drawers, but left most of her jewelry alone. (Her alexandrite necklace is missing, she notices.) It's weird, isn't it? Why didn't they just take everything, while they were at it?
Marie walks into the bathroom and shuts the door behind her. She leans against the counter for a long time, her face buried in her hands as she cries—quietly, so she doesn't disturb the workers and make a scene. And when she's through with that, she washes her face, touches up her makeup, and reaches under the sink to find her cleaning gloves.
The ghost of Hank is everywhere. She wants to think that's a good thing, the way people say our loved ones never really leave us, but it doesn't feel good right now. It feels like a knife twisting in her heart. It's only been a few days, so maybe that's normal. Dave says it's normal.
Who really cares about normal right now, though? Who cares, when she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking she can hear him typing on his laptop in bed beside her. When she accidentally sets two places at the dinner table. When she spots a Schraderbrau in the refrigerator that he bottled just a few weeks ago They're little moments, little nothings, that send a shock through her and remind her that normal is over. Every harmless reminder sends her doubled over in tears, reliving that final day.
"You're never gonna see Hank again."
But she does. She sees him all over this house. And now that she's sent all the workers home, it's just her and the ghost of Hank, trying to piece a life back together.
She feels a strange relief that so much of the furniture's been replaced. After what happened, she found that she couldn't even touch it. But it's more than that, more than the idea of Heisenberg's filth contaminating her home. It's that, with Hank's favorite chair gone and no more rug that he complained about so much, those are a few less things that bring her back to the moment when before ended and she lost the one thing that gave meaning to all of this stuff around her. At that moment, everything became this endless, sprawling after where life itself has come to an end and only ghosts remain. She can't move on, surrounded by these things that keep pulling her back.
Even with the big stuff repaired or replaced, there are little things everywhere that need fixing.
She starts with the pictures. Most of the frames were shattered, many of the photographs themselves scratched or destroyed. Marie sorts through each and every one, silent tears pouring down her face all the while. The frames go in the trash and the photos end up in a box tied with a mauve ribbon. She promises she'll get new picture frames soon, but she doesn't. The box stays tied up, sitting in a drawer in the spare bedroom where Jesse Pinkman once slept, the door of which she can't even pass by without tears returning to her eyes.
The garage is next. She doesn't feel safe leaving the car outside anymore, so she has to clear space for it inside. They should have gotten rid of the wheelchair ages ago. When was the last time Hank even used that thing? Well, it gets donated to the hospital, of course. The files are all gone, back to the DEA, but it's Marie's job to toss out the boxes. Then there's the distillery. She always hated this thing, especially that one time the bottles all exploded and gave them both heart attacks. She runs her hand over one of the levers, smiling wistfully, then hauls every piece out to the curb and puts an ad on Craigslist (with Flynn's help).
The bedroom closet feels impossible, at first. It used to be a beautiful his-and-hers walk-in. Now it looks like the back room of a T. in the bad part of town. There's more urine, along with cigarette ashes and charring, which she hopes to God will somehow identify who did this. Most of the clothes are torn or seem to have been stomped on. She saves what can be salvaged of her own wardrobe. Hank's clothes have to be thrown away, except for a single orange button-down that happened to be left on a hanger. She hugs it when she sees it waiting for her. Then she packs it away, out of sight.
The last of Hank's things, the rock collection, was mostly destroyed in the break-in. Gorgeous shards of malachite and lapis lazuli were swept into plastic bags along with the pieces of rosewood shelving upon which they sat. Now she's left to sort through the survivors herself. She picks up a pink tourmaline, holding it up to the light. She puts it down in favor of an amethyst. Pretty crystals. Their shimmering fades out into bokeh before she squeezes her eyes shut. She can't throw them away. She buys a new cabinet for them and installs a black light on the inside. It makes them glow, little neon phantoms.
The reminders of everything that isn't anymore.
Even with the house scrubbed clean, with all the remnants of Hank's life confined to shrines in cabinets and closets, Marie can't let go. She finds herself in Dave's office, as she does week after week, where she picks lint off her byzantium cardigan and smoothes out the wrinkles in the cushions beside her.
"She hasn't said a word," Marie tells him.
"Your sister?"
Marie nods, pressing her lips into a tight line, trying and failing to suppress a tirade. "I mean, you would think she thinks this is somehow my fault. As if it wasn't the two of them all along, conspiring! And I bet she thinks Hank deserves this for investigating in the first place. Everything was just so neat and tidy for them before we came along and ruined it."
"Has she done anything to indicate that's how she feels?"
"No. But I just know her."
"What about your nephew? You said you'd been speaking with him."
Marie presses a hand over her heart, blinking back tears. "He told me he loves Hank more than his own father. I guess that's obvious, isn't it? But he said he always felt like that, a little. And he used to feel bad about it. But he doesn't anymore. We both want Hank to come home."
Dave attempts to keep a neutral expression, but the corners of his lips turn into a frown. "Have you both prepared yourselves for the possibility that that won't be happening?"
Marie swipes her palm across her eyes, trying not to smear her mascara. "I still feel him," she says, "out there, somewhere. Like he's just in the other room, or out in the garage, or he ran to the store, or he's at the office. He told me it'd be a while before he gets home."
"What if he never comes home?"
Marie doesn't hear Dave. She looks away from him entirely, off to the distant corner of the room. "If I hadn't taken the money… If I'd just—just tried to take out a loan or something. It never would've come to this. We would've had that bastard. All the scheming in the world couldn't have stopped us then. That disgusting confession tape…"
Dave offers unhelpfully, "There's no way you could have known—"
"Who falls for that? Gambling money. My husband is the Assistant Special Agent in Charge. How did I not see it?"
"No one saw—"
"And Skyler. Even if she was in danger—no, especially if she was in danger, she should've come to me. I could've helped her. Hank and I both. She had so many chances. I was always there, just the two of us…"
"Women in abusive situations often—"
"If I'd only had the nerve to poison that son of a bitch. Oh God, if I'd only…"
"Marie."
"I know," she says, putting up her hands. Then she folds them in her lap, her shoulders sinking. "I know."
Violence did this to them. Violence couldn't possibly solve it. Things have to be fixed, not torn apart.
Every date on the calendar becomes an anniversary. One week since their last phone call. Then one month. Then two. Seven weeks since the last time she made lasagna for him. Nine weeks since the last time they went to the movies. Four months since the last time he bought her flowers.
In the meantime, life hangs suspended. Taking care of Hank had been her main occupation, if not throughout their marriage, then at least since the cartel shooting. Now there's nothing to fill the time that used to be spent by his side. She always feels like she's forgetting something, neglecting something, like there's a task left unfinished. That feeling stretches on for months with no end in sight. She goes to work and comes home to an empty house and a rock collection gathering dust and waits all night for the sound of keys at the door before she finally gives in to sleep, alone.
She's done all those things you're supposed to do, but she can't escape it. No matter how many months after, she's still waiting for the moment when things will return to how they were before.
A different kind of anniversary finally comes up: Flynn's seventeenth birthday.
Marie spends weeks preparing. Every evening after work, she goes from mall to mall, trying to suss out what all the cool kids are into. She's glad the boys are wearing their pants properly again. She never understood why they all wanted to look like drug-addicted hoodlums. Her mind flits back to Jesse Pinkman, that unfortunate boy whose face is always on the news right next to Walt's, who thanked her for coffee and is probably now rotting in a ditch somewhere, and she immediately ducks into Teavana to distract herself with a free sample of rooibos.
She comes to decide that clothes are out. She doesn't know where to start with the record stores, either. Anyway, she's pretty sure kids don't listen to records. She's passing an Apple store, admiring just how clean and white everything looks, when she realizes that Flynn's electronics were all seized when the government took the family's drug-funded possessions. Well, that's settled then.
"Holy shit, Aunt Marie!" Flynn gasps as he's unwrapping his gift in the living room of the depressing apartment he, Skyler, and Holly now call home. "An iPhone 4! Are you serious?"
"Well, you know," Marie says, cradling her glass of white wine, "that was almost an iPod, but the salesman talked me up. I mean, it's the same thing as an iPod but it comes with a phone, so… well, why the heck not? That's their best model, too. —Oh, keep looking, there's more in the gift bag."
Flynn keeps digging until he finds the accessories and gift cards, howling out in excitement at each new discovery.
"You shouldn't have," Skyler says in a distant voice, her expression obscured by the glare of the sun in the window behind her.
"I wanted to," Marie replies shortly.
Too thrilled to even sense the tension, Flynn cuts in, "I'm gonna go load this thing up, okay, mom?" When Skyler gives a nod of assent, he hugs Marie before disappearing into his bedroom.
"I hope he doesn't forget there's still cake," Marie says, mostly to herself. "I spent hours on that." Then her attentions turn to Holly, who's playing with scraps of violet wrapping paper at her feet. "I bet you're gonna beg me for one of those next year, huh. Gotta call all those handsome boyfriends of yours. Look at you, growing so fast. You're not allowed to grow that fast!"
Skyler excuses herself to smoke a cigarette outside.
When three cigarettes' worth of time has passed, Marie puts Holly in the pen and goes out to join her sister. Sure enough, there is what's probably Skyler's third cigarette pinched between her fingers. Marie hovers by the door for a moment, watching Skyler's back, then sweeps her eyes over the neighborhood. She doesn't like this place. It reminds her of where they grew up. Flynn and Holly deserve a lot better than this. "Ugh, look at your lawn," she says to break the silence. "Is your landlord even trying? I've seen trailer parks with greener yards."
Skyler takes a drag from her cigarette.
"I mean, if you don't want to pay to water the damn thing, then at least do some landscaping. Succulents. Rocks. Something. Am I right?"
Skyler takes another drag.
"How long are you going to stay angry at me?" Marie snaps abruptly, charging forward since Skyler refuses to look at her. "I mean, Jesus, I—" She cuts herself off when she sees Skyler's face, soaked with tears that must have been falling long before Marie came out here.
Skyler immediately turns away, flicking her cigarette onto the sidewalk and pressing her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.
"Oh, sweetie, no…" Marie's tone drops its edge, now gentle and full of remorse. She gathers Skyler into her arms for a tight hug. "No, don't cry. What's wrong? Talk to me."
"Everything's wrong," Skyler weeps into Marie's shoulder. "Everything. Look at us. Look where we are. Look what's happened. All because—"
"Shh, shh…"
"And I can't even afford to give my son a birthday present. I can barely afford the rent. How did it ever get to this?"
How did it ever get to this? It got to this because two sisters happened to marry two certain men. One of them was an American hero. The other a despicable villain, a gutless coward and a liar. It got to this because they loved their husbands more than anything, and while those men were busy tearing at each other's throats, it was their family that suffered.
"Skyler," Marie cuts in shrilly. "Come with me. Come live with me. You and the kids. This is ridiculous, the three of you in this place when I'm all by myself in that big empty house."
A funny thing, how anger and blame can be swept aside in the face of her sister's pain.
Skyler, however, shakes her head. She's determined. "No. Absolutely not."
"Why not?"
"Because that house is empty because of me," Skyler chokes out. She pulls away, jerking out of Marie's arms before her sister can protest and staggering back to the door. "Go. Just go. Go, if you hate this place so much. I can't do this. I can't."
And she disappears inside, leaving a stunned Marie standing alone with that dead lawn.
Months later, a chipper ringtone cuts through the silence of Marie's still-empty house. "Slow down, honey," she says with her cell phone pressed to one ear, getting up from her chair to grab her thistle-colored jacket. "Say that again. Breathe first. ...Okay, what happened?"
"He called me at school," Flynn's voice howls on the other end. "He… He told them it was you, but… It was something about his money. He wanted to send us money. And—"
"Are you at home now?"
"Yeah. Aunt Marie…"
"Shh, listen. I'm coming right now. I'll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?"
"Aunt Marie, I don't think mom…"
"I don't care! I'm—"
The house phone rings. "Oh, Jesus," Marie hisses. "What now? Flynn, I'll call you back. And tell Skyler I'll be there whether she likes it or not."
She hangs up her iPhone to answer the other phone, but the news just keeps getting worse. It's the DEA on the line. Walter White was sighted in New Hampshire and the authorities have reason to believe he's fled the state and may be returning to New Mexico. They give her some details, but the words become a meaningless buzz in her ears.
Now, after six months, that bastard's coming to terrorize her family again.
"I'm going to my sister's," Marie interrupts the agent, who's halfway through explaining the procedures of protective custody.
"Ma'am, we highly discourage that," the agent answers wearily. "Our men are already on their way to your home to set up surveillance. If and when Walter White attempts to make contact, it would be best if the location is familiar to us and to him. You being a key witness to events, we have reason to believe your home will be his very first stop if he's making an attempt to tie up loose ends. With your cooperation—if you remain at the residence—we may just be able to nab the son of a bitch."
"What about my sister? You know, the woman he threatened the same day you all let him slip away!"
"We have a team assembling there as well. Don't worry, Mrs. Schrader. If he shows his face in this state, we will catch him."
That face is all over the news again, along with stupid captions like: THE RETURN OF HEISENBERG? As if he's a character from a movie or something, some kind of supervillain. The newscasters practically look gleeful about it. They play sound bites of every warbly, electronically-modified phone call that comes in, and Marie call easily tell that none of them are actually Walt. They're all just sick attention-seekers.
...Which, she supposes, doesn't actually make them all that different from Walt.
The return of Walt's face means the return of Jesse Pinkman's and Steve's and Hank's faces, as well. All still missing—"Presumed dead," the newslady peppily reads off the teleprompter before Marie gets the chance to shut the TV off, breaking down in tears.
She spends the rest of the evening sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee, watching the armed agent standing guard on the other side of the kitchen window, the glittering lights of the city visible down the hill behind him. Walt's out there somewhere. She hopes he does come for her. She hopes he appears right here in her living room, just so she can get the chance to wring the truth out of him. So she can find out, once and for all, where Hank is, what happened to him. She shuts her eyes and imagines torturing the bastard like they do on 24, getting every answer out of him and then killing him with her own bare hands. She could do it, she thinks.
But it's just a fantasy.
She jumps when the front door opens, thinking he's actually made it here. She's so startled she knocks her mug over, sending coffee spreading over the tablecloth like a bloodstain, but before she gets a chance to fuss about it, the agent at the door is saying, "We got him, Mrs. Schrader. APD's got him."
"Oh my God," Marie breathes, pressing her hand to her heart. "They've got Walt in custody? Right now?"
"No, he's—He's deceased, ma'am."
All of her relief and jubilation shrinks and shrivels into a sick ache.
Walt's already dead. Dead men don't give answers.
"Thank you," she says in a tight voice, no longer looking at the agent but turning her tear-filled eyes to the rock collection on display across the room. "Thank you. You can all go now. I'll be fine here."
"There's something else," the agent says.
The darkness of his tone makes Marie's heart drop further and she guesses, "Skyler?" Followed directly with a more frantic, "Is she alright?"
"She's downtown right now, giving a statement," he says. "It might be best if you come with us. There's been a development."
Coordinates on a lottery ticket. A lonely stretch of desert surrounded by red rocks. A sloppily swept-up crime scene. They find bullet shells left in the brush and sand. Even bits of shrapnel that were probably shot off the SUV, judging from the traces of paint. And two bodies, of course, unceremoniously dumped into a shallow grave.
Marie never goes to see it herself, the place where her husband was murdered. To'hajiilee. She doesn't know what the name means, but to her it means hell or a nightmare you never wake up from. She doesn't know why she thought answers would bring closure. There's a body now, and there's a funeral, and at the end of it, she's still alone and the man she loves is still dead and there is no undoing any of it, no returning to the way it was before, and nothing left to do now. No hope for Hank's safe return but no chance for revenge.
The house is still empty and the ghost of Hank is still there, reminding her of what she's missing, what she's going to be missing for the rest of her life.
When the reporters stop coming around and the press moves on to celebrate someone else's tragedy, everything settles into uneasy calm. There is, at least, no more unknown danger lurking around every corner. It isn't quite peace, but it's a decent substitute and she'll take it. It means that she can visit Skyler without having to wait in line behind a crowd of photographers and human parasites.
"He was standing right here," Skyler says, her palm brushing the countertop. "Right in front of here. He didn't really want breakfast. He just wanted to come clean."
"I don't care what he wanted," Marie answers coldly. But her voice softens with the next words, "What's important to me is you. You and the kids. I want to know what you want."
"What does it matter?" Skyler sighs, tapping the ashes of her cigarette into the kitchen sink.
"It matters to me," Marie says. "Skyler, I forgive you. Alright? Yes, it was horrible, all the things you helped him do. But you stood by your man, and I understand that, because I stood by mine, too. But now they're both gone. And you know who's left standing here? You and me. You and me, with nobody left to stand by us. Do you know what that means?"
Skyler finally turns to look at her with bloodshot eyes.
Marie continues, "It means we stand by each other." She takes a breath, gathering herself up, her hands wringing. "Skyler, you and the kids are moving in with me. This isn't even a debate. I can't stand being alone anymore, and I don't think you can stand it either, and we're a family. I know that keeping us together used to be the most important thing to you, despite everything. So let's do that now. Let's be a family again."
Skyler doesn't seem to know what to do with the demand. Her lips waver, as if she might laugh or cry and she doesn't know which to choose. Some part of her is still fighting, still blaming. At least, that's how it looks to Marie. But after a few long moments of that internal battle raging, Skyler nods and Marie steps forward to hug her sister tight.
Flynn ends up leaving the state to go to school in Washington on Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz's dime. It's for the best, really. It's hard to escape Walter White's memory in New Mexico, where a kind of sick legend has formed around the man, but people up north have already forgotten along with the media, and Flynn has a chance at anonymity and a normal college life up there.
But the house is by no means empty. Not anymore. The room where Jesse Pinkman slept becomes Holly's nursery, and old photographs of a time long gone are replaced with colorful crayon scribbles. She's a terror of a toddler, it turns out, but Skyler has the freedom to look after her now, and when Marie gets home from work, she's happy to take over. Every night, the house is filled with laughter and shrieks of excitement and knick-knacks getting knocked off shelves by a sweet baby's hands. It's a better kind of chaos than the one which left her life in ruins for so long.
Skyler's writing again, and although Marie keeps offering to proofread it, she says she's not ready. Not yet. Marie has no idea what she's even working on, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is the smell of a big dinner cooking on the stove, and the sound of Skyler's fingers on laptop keys, and the little girl asking Aunt Marie to name the rocks with the sparkly crystals that are up there on that shelf.
Nothing will ever be the same as it was before, but a house becomes a home again.